The Master and the apprentice
by SSLE
Summary: After Frollo confesses his Love to Esmeralda he finds Gringoire on la-Ile-de-la Cité.


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Hello!

**This is one-shot and it doesn't have any special plot it's a just and conversation between a philosopher and a priest…between a master and an apprentice Talk between Dom Claude Frollo and Pierre Gringoire. **

**I just wanted to say that there will be some grammar mistalkes and I apologize for that. English it ´s not my mother language, and I didn´t send this to my BETA because the idea of writting this was..sudden. **

**I was re-reading the book and the idea came.**

**--**

**If you want a lover  
I'll do anything you ask me to  
And if you want another kind of love  
I'll wear a mask for you  
If you want a partner  
Take my hand  
Or if you want to strike me down in anger  
Here I stand  
I'm your man - L. Cohen  
**

--

And everybody knows that the Plague is coming  
Everybody knows that it's moving fast  
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman  
Are just a shining artifact of the past  
Everybody knows the scene is dead  
But there's gonna be a meter on your bed  
That will disclose  
What everybody knows

And everybody knows that you're in trouble  
Everybody knows what you've been through  
From the bloody cross on top of Calvary  
To the beach of Malibu  
Everybody knows it's coming apart  
Take one last look at this Sacred Heart  
Before it blows  
And everybody knows - L. Cohen

Sorry, couldn´t resist!

--

Rain was falling in Paris. It was a grey and sad day. It was curious how the weather, could, sometimes match with people's state of spirit. Not many persons were on the street at that hour. However Pierre Gringoire, the prince of Paris streets (the way he liked to calling himself) was sited on a rock, watching the river Seine.

He was on the ile de la Cite and beyond him, it was risen the beautiful Notre Dame, with all Her splendour.

So you ask why our favourite poet was with these sad eyes, and why he was throwing little rocks to the River with a melancholy look on his face.

Esmeralda, her "wife", was arrested in a cold dangerous waiting for be hang on la Greve. But that wasn't the worse. Djali, her beautiful and wonderful goat, was waiting to be hanging too. When Gringoire thought in this his heart seem to jump and all his blood rushed through his body.

But there was a person in the city, and a person who was very close to Gringoire, who was even worse than the poet.

Dom Claude Frollo, the priest, could feel the guilt on his blood. The woman he loves, the woman he would give up everything to be with, the woman who was in his dreams every night, where their bodies were just one. It was the face of this woman he always seen when he opened a book, when he prayed. He prayed to her. For her.

And now…after he confess his love to her, after he confess his feelings, feelings that he didn't even dare to say himself before, he told her. He confessed his love; he put his heart on her hand. And she destroyed it.

When he exited the dangerous, tears fell from his eyes. From his dark and blazing eyes. Tears of anger, because after all he said to her, after his declaration of love, after he gave his heart to her, after his attempts to save her, in changing of her love, Esmeralda still called for Phoebus…why the girl didn't understand that the solder never loved her?!

The handsome captain just wanted to take her, nothing more.

After all, Frollo understood that he wasn't regret. He should be. But he felt a morbid pleasure in stabbing Phoebus.

And finally tears of love find their way to spill. He cried, during so many hours that he couldn't even remember. He cried her name, he review his dreams of her. He recalled her look of hate, and his look of love.

Finally in the deep hours of the night, he was walking on the streets, like a drunk man. And then he saw…

It was Gringoire wasn't it?

Why he was there? Dom Claude always knew that Gringoire always had managed a place to sleep…

He approached the man.

"Master Gringoire?" He asked

The man raised his eyes and saw his former master. He rose

"Master…" Gringoire looked at his eyes, which were illuminated by the full moon, the only light at that hour. The priest´s eyes were red. He had been crying. This man doesn't cry! He thought. "If I may ask, what are you doing outside at this hour?" He asked with a little bow of his head.

"I was about to asking you the same question. Didn't you find a place to sleep tonight?"

"Oh, no master! I have a place to sleep and to eat. I just…don't want to be there…Well I wanted to be alone"

Claude asked himself if Gringoire´s reason for want to be alone was the same than his.

"Why?"

"Excuse me?"

"Why do you want to be alone, master Gringoire?"

"I…because…well" Rolling his eyes at Gringoire ramblings, Dom Claude whispered

"It's for your wife, the gypsy Esmeralda?" It was the first time that Frollo use the word Esmeralda in such a natural way.

The poet looked again to the priest.

"Are you talking for your own experience, master?" Gringoire asked, feeling very daring

"I beg your pardon?"

"I am not used to see you, in the streets, at this hour. I am here because I need to think and as you can imagine, the Court of Miracles it´s not a proper place to think and to reflect. So I came here. But you, master, you at this hour should be in your cell, reading, studding or simply sleeping. Sleeping is an activity that any reasonable person should be doing at this hour of the night. And the last time I check you were a reasonable person."

Claude sighed.

"Are you thinking in Esmeralda?"

"Not just Esmeralda…but more important Djali!" The poet almost screamed in desperate.

"Djali? It´s not the goat?"

"Yes! And master, you should see her!

"It, Gringoire. It is an animal, not a person" The priest said

"No…she is not just an animal…I must tell you master, listen, she understand me more than anyone else…and she is so smart!"

"What about the girl? Your wife to be?"

Gringoire stop his speech about Djali

"I am worry about her too…I don't believe, not even for a moment, that she could have stab that soldier. She would never be able to do that. "

Frollo nodded.

"May I ask you something Master?"

"Can I stop you?" Claude asked sarcastic. He remembered Gringoire when he was a student

"Probably not." Frollo looked for Gringore with an interrogative look.

"Are you in love with my wife, Father?"

Claude looked at him with an incredible anger. His eyes went even redder and he was really scaring. Gringoire noticed all of this and he was so scared that he couldn't say a word.

However the question was quite torturous to Dom Claude.

"Do you really want to know?!" He yelled "Do you?"

The curiosity took the best of Gringoire and he nodded quickly.

"YES! I DO! I DO LOVE HER! And I would do EVERYTHING for her…I would kill a thousand mans for have her, for could heard her say: I love you…for she loves me as I love her"

Gringoire mouth fell open. He had never expected this but the priest continued

"And you want to know more? I was stupid enough to go there, to the prison this very night to tell her this…to confess my love to her, I gave my heart to her, and she destroyed it! I told her everything! Feelings I never said even to myself when I was alone, on my cell, at night dreaming with her…with her with me…with her bare skin on mine.

"You are in love, Father"

Frollo started to laugh

"Yes…oh Yes. Love is a terrible thing. Powerful. But terrible."

"I think love is a wonderful thing"

"That" the priest said "is because you have never loved anyone. You don't know the feeling of want someone and don't have her. The feeling of want someone but don't have any hope. You…don't understand…you don't understand, anyone does…"

"Love and can ´t have her? I think I imagine what is that."

"No you don't. You know what ´s like to feel you are the most happy men in world, just because she looked at you or simply because you saw her, or speak with her. Or because you heard her laugh.

You know what ´s like to have the desperate need to know everything about her? Who is she? How is she? What is she like in the morning when she woke up, or at night when she falls asleep.

To wait minutes, hours, just for have the opportunity of see her. Just see her. And that moment when you see her, stays in you mind forever"

Do you know what it ´s like, Master Gringoire?" Frollo asked in a whisper

Gringoire couldn't do anything more than shake his head.

* * *

For those who didn´t read the book, (Well you should), this one-shot it´s after Frollo confess his love to Esmeralda, when she is in prison waiting for being hanged.

Hope you like!

Tell me what you think! Review!


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